A Study On Correlation Among Tolerance Of Ambiguity And English Reading Comprehension Achievement And Reading Strategies Of Senior High School Students

Learning target language is filled with ambiguities. Reading, as an important component of target language learning, naturally has many ambiguities. Therefore, psychologists have put forward “tolerance or intolerance of ambiguity” to explain the phenomenon. Many linguists have studied the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity(TOA) and second/foreign language learning as well as the specific aspects of language learning. However, research on correlation between TOA and reading of English as a foreign language(EFL) is not enough at present, thus the research topic is studied by author.First of all, the research questions are as following:1. What is the current situation about TOA level of participants from Yonghe high school ?2. Is there any correlation between TOA and English reading comprehension achievement of high school students? If any, is it positive or negative? Is there any difference for the reading test scores among participants with different TOA levels?3. Is there any correlation between TOA and use of reading strategies high school students? If any, is it positive or negative? Is there any difference for the use of reading strategies among participants with different TOA levels?In order to probe into the research questions, 50 students of grade three of Yonghe high school are chosen as participants. Two questionnaires, a reading test paper, interview and SPSS( Statistics Package for Social Science) are adopted as research instruments. Furthermore, the two questionnaires come from Ely’s(1995) second language TOA scale and Chamot and Kupper’s(1989) reading strategies questionnaire respectively. And English paper(I) of college entrance examination in 2015 is utilized as reading test paper.Research findings are as following:1. More than half of participants have moderate TOA level and the rest participants are scattered into high and low TOA level with close number of people.2. There is a positive correlation between TOA and reading test achievements and there is significant difference among subjects with different TOA levels in reading scores.3. TOA is positively correlated with use of reading strategies and students with4. different TOA levels have greatly different performance in using reading strategies. Participants with high and moderate TOA level are inclined to use cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies, and in using social and affective strategies, high, moderate, and low TOA level groups have no significant difference.From the research results, TOA is correlated with English reading and use of reading strategies closely. More importantly, TOA is beneficial to English reading and reading strategies application. Therefore, some pedagogical implications can be obtained from the research.